Discussion on:

TechRepublic's official feedback thread for the 2011 upgrade

Alright, so we've launched the new version of TechRepublic and we're very pretty excited about. See:
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/hiner/techrepublics-2011-upgrade-simpler-and-lot-more-social/7473

On the other hand, we know that we've moved your cheese (see http://bit.ly/moved-my-cheese) and we realize that many of you who come here everyday are going to take a while to get used to the new layout.

However, we'd like your constructive feedback, and your help in running down bugs and alerting us to things we've inadvertently (or purposefully) changed that could have unintended consequences. Please post your feedback, bugs, errors, (and even applause) in this thread. If someone posts something that you agree with or were going to post then use the "+" voting button to vote it up. If someone posts something you disagree with then use the "-" voting button to vote it down.

Thanks in advance for helping us make the site better. We always appreciate your time and input.

To a smiley face.

Might deflect the shilt that is sure to come.

Myself, I think you and your people done good.

As usual, TR uses a pleasing colour scheme, though a bit bland on a notebook without colour matching. Navigation is more complicated and will simply perpetuate the ongoing issue with people not finding their chosen content or posting in the wrong places.

NOTE: When you edit a comment, all previous formatting is lost and you have to space paragraphs all over again.

I've come to expect that though, no matter how many changes have been made and how many times TR asked for feedback to find out people want it simplied, it continues to look too busy and takes what would be very simple navigation and turn it into a confusing mess of links (techs, you can't live with 'em and you can't teach them what KISS means).

Oh hey, I just realised that, under a group of unrelated sidebars all offering links or ads, there is still a short Hot Discussions list (well a bunch of big blue bars with links anyway), hang on, it was on another page too, in a different place though.

Sorry but you guys could have done WAAAAAAAAAY better.

I know it takes a while to get comfortable with changes but this is just bad navigation gone worse. There's no logical layout, it changes depending on what page you are on, ads and galleries are mixed with links.

The right side bar is just a mix of rubbish with no logical layout at all. The last layout was the best yet, after many changes, but this is just good potential made to look like a mess.

Holy crap! Not only is my avatar missing, now I have to open a new account with another picture host. I only assume TR gets paid for image loads or something. So I grudgingly open an account with another hokey online host, pull my avatar from my current picture hosty, upload it and guess what? IT'S A DIFFERENT SIZE AVATAR NOW! So now I have to open in Fireworks, resize, trim redraw, all of my avatars (about 8 for the year) because, for some unknown reason, TR changed sizing and forces using their chosen avatar host. Thanks again fella's! Oh hey, look at THAT, ANOTHER mess of links in a big blue bar at the bottom of the page, NIIIIICE layout guys, didi everyone design a panel at home and then they were all just thrown onto a page with no rhyme or reason? ICK! Of course, you have to scroll by a hideously balanced left white space with bar after bar of links on one side, in order to get to it though.

Why do people do this when simple site changes to an existing format offer a vast improvements without redesigning the whole page and then reworking a ghastly layout for a year until it becomes sorta usable again. To think that with the money and resources C-Net has, this is the best they can come up with, a website that works like it was designed by n00bs on crack.

I've seen some sketchy changes here over the years, this has got to be just an early April fools days joke though.

You're suggesting we get paid for image loads? Please. You're a lot smarter than that. (But, then again, I did get a good laugh out of it.)

I thought there had to be some motivation to have a single chocie for user image storage.

All you need is an email address and an image, plus then you can not only use it on our site but others as well.

From our perspective, we get a service that scales images well and keeps up with the latest security and decency filtering in images.

Win-win from our perspective.

Jason -

Gravatar should be an option, not a mandatory. Not everyone wants to set up a Gravatar account. I know I didn't want to. It's like the sites that use stupid OpenID for authentication... I now have a WordPress account that I'll never use, just so I can post questions to StackOverflow. It supposedly cuts the clutter for users, but for folks who only need it for one site, it increases the clutter.

The better approach would be to push Gravatar, but have a fallback option using the old system.

J.Ja

I sighed when I realized I was forced to jopin another site, that offers free image storage for an email address, certainly an invitation to a flood of spam and junk mail from their 'affiliates' (anyone who wants to buy the addresses from them.

The main PO for me was the change in sizing though.

I thought TR might be offering a new library of avatar images but nope.. the profile link lead me to the Gravatar site. It would be nice if TR offered a short list of directly hosted icons. With only two of many websites asking me to join Gravatar; I'll be remaining a blank avatar likely.

It's not like an avatar is a requirement. If one doesn't want to use avatar, the default silhouette is always an option.

I'd still like to see the TR flag as the default instead.

TR used to encourage it. they did a points and (reward?) system once to get people to complete profiles and upload an avatar. I know people's avatar's as I would recognize faces in the real world. TR once wanted to encourage use of avatars and completing profiles (as many good sites force you to do before posting) as it cuts down on spammers. People won't post spam links and run if it is a more involved registration process, thus you build a better community with fewer 'post and runs'.


Now you have a choice, register with a new host, upload and reformat an avatar, welcoming more junk mail and spam, or don't have an avatar. If the latter, why have them at all ,if they are all going to be blank avatars then there's simply no point at all in using them to begin with, just list by user name.

I'm not interested in signing up for another site. Especially since I can't just use a garbage email address, (or can I?)

What could possibly be so hard about just letting us upload a small pic directly from our own PCs? FB does it and so do any number of other, smaller sites.

I set up an account and I *might* find a value in it at some time in the future, but I would have liked to take my time thinking it through.

There are sites that I use that I don't care to use a picture of me, others where I use a specific avatar for specific reasons, still others that I would prefer a more professional appearing pic. In my experience, one size rarely fits all.

Gravatar allows you to use a different picture on a per-site basis. It's a good system, and I like it, but it's not for everyone and it's not a good thing that TR forces you to use it if you want to use a picture.

J.Ja

I know they allow per email address, but I didn't see anything about per site.

NT

J.Ja

I just now went and checked a webcomic I've been folllowing, and the comments I wrote in the feedback section... and now they have this gravatar next to them!!
And it's not like I've posted there through a login or anything, I just provided my email address in the comment form as required!
Talk about nebulous...

On that, and another note, I may stay blank.

Yahoo provides throwaway email addresses, so I guess you could put one of those up for gravatar. It'll still be accessable through yahoo, but it's hopefully insulated...

Such as Windows Live, Picturetrail etc. you now have to download, reformat, upload images to a new server that you have to sign up for and await a flood of spam and junk mail from. It would have been somewhat palletable if the image size remained the same though. Lose lose from a users perspective.

If the average new visitor has an attention span of 12 seconds to find what they want, this is dead in the water before the champagne bottle breaks on the bow. Some lifers will take time to muddle through the birds nest of links and panels, but it is not at all inviting for new visitors.

Well Jason for starters the sizes are different which requires you to resize or do without.

Then there is the slight issue of needing to join yet another site and spread what where previously Secure E Mail Address about. In the Past I was sure that TR wouldn't be sharing my E Mail Address with anyone and they where the only ones to get most of those which can not be dumped at a moments notice.

Now there is a site Gravatar who has 2 of my E Mail Addresses that would be inconvenient to loose though not Earth Shattering it would certainly be Inconvenient. The remainder they will never see and any Accounts that are already open or may be opened in the future will remain Blank.

Currently I'm not overly happy with the need to join yet another site just so I can post at TR with the same features that where in place previously. Maybe I'll get used to the FB Look of things but currently at the moment I'm debating weather or not to continue using TR as it's become inconvenient, hard to know where posts will end up particularly in Q&A Threads, Not Possible to Subscribe to Questions/Discussions without adding a post and seriously looks way too much like Face Book which I refuse to use.

I've also just seen that the Contact TR Link that used to be on every page is no longer there nor is there a link to report Spam Posts so I'm assuming that this was just an oversight that will get changed when it gets brought to your attention.

Col

it is now called flag, and it gives you several options as to how to report the post, cool, I like it.

It's still there... at the bottom of the post is a link that says "Flag".

J.Ja

Here's the link to Gravatar's privacy policy:
http://en.gravatar.com/site/privacy

In short, they promise to "never rent, sell, or otherwise distribute or make public your email address." We wouldn't have used them unless they had such an unequivocal policy.

... just ask Google.

Sorry, but there's no defense on this one. Gravatar should be *an* option, not *the* option. Personally, I don't mind Gravatar, but I'm standing up for the folks who have every right to not want to use it. Just let people host elsewhere, and offer defaults icons for folks as well.

J.Ja

I bet that policy doesn't apply to governments, for instance.

Have a look.
http://xkcd.com/792/
This is exactly why I sign up for as few services as possible.

This is now my third or fourth Gravatar account, thanks to the fact I don't use the same email address everywhere for purposes of keeping things separated.

I am hoping that I can at least choose avatars per-site from the same email address as Justin mentions.

I am still really not happy with TR pulling the avatar from my existing Gravatar account automatically. A note that an existing Gravatar was detected and an offer to use it would have been just fine, if automated social connectivity was what they were shooting for. But the current behavior is just wrong.

I never took the time to set up an avatar before, but I was considering it... until now.

Why should I fork over my email address(es) and to some extent my online identity, wade through a bunch of incomprehensible legaleze which becomes null & void when someone buys out gravatar next year anyway... when I have 3 (yea, count 'em 3) web servers in my basement on my own static IPs. I have the ability of hosting my own avatar [and my own email... another reason to not sign up "just anywhere" - extra spam... ] yet it's not an option to host one's own avatar?

A lot of the changes to the site I dislike immensely -- mostly because I just don't like change. [ I'm a serious subscriber to the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mantra. ] Any time that an option to host ones own images isn't available sounds like there's an underlying (and underhanded) motive (even if it's just PHB foolishness) for the decision.

I'm just sayin'...
"Merch"

I've considered it more than once:

step 1, host avatar image on my own managed server
step 2, give TR my avatar URL
step 3, collect the logs as all you other TR readers download my avatar image
step 4, (uh.. ok.. I got not setup four yet)
step 5, Profit!! (this is where figuring out step four comes in )

I'm not really sure how much of a concern it is but it does present an option to collect information on fellow TR readers.

I like the new profile layout. It's easier to follow contacts, update newsletter subscriptions, and set preferences. However, I can't seem to find an equivalent of the Updates listing from the old Workspace. Where is a list of the discussions I've subscribed to? I used this list to try to keep up with my subscribed discussions and now I can't find it.

Am I looking in the wrong place? Or is construction just not finished yet?

Now go an edit your comment and see how well it is displayed without spaces or paragraphs. There is a mess of links in the bottom bar, scroll down past the ads and other junk in the right sidebar, you may find a page that disaplys your discussions, it's not uniform, each page seems to offer a unique navigation set.

I've already run into it, and we've already been told they're working on it.

As for the bottom of the page, most of that has always been there. It was just ignored except in rare cases when the targeted ads or recommended links didn't make sense or were hilarious. I took a good look and It actually makes more sense than it used to.

The problem I'm having right now is that I've set my default thread view to Expanded, yet this thread is displayed collapsed and I can find no way to expand it.

Was mainly redundant as far more logical navigation was available near the top of the page.

not nearly as useful as the old Print/View All, primarlly because the old way used the entire screen whilst the new way stays to a limited column size.

I do like that I can set my default view to expanded, however, and not have to click each comment to open and read.

Try setting the default to collapsed, then back to expanded again.

If I select and individual post, I get collapsed. If I click on the thread title, I get my default selections.

Weird.

@NickNielsen: At the top-right of every page is a menu called "My Account." (It's in the blue bar.) Mouse over that menu and select "My Stuff," and you'll go to a page listing all the discussion threads you have participated in. Also available on that page are all your Q&As.

Scarily, mine go back to 2006!

It was more accessible and sensibly laid out before. It doesn' matter though, TR always asks for feedback, defends all the changes against complaints and then leaves it as is anyway. The same thing happens every time there are changes, whether people like them or not. The mentality is 'you'll get used to it' whether it works or not. It's really just about 'user issue' feedback and will acting on botched script issues but if the layout was purple and yellow and deemed absolutely repulsive, TR has no intention on changing it, apparently they know what everyone wants.

Of course we can't make everyone happy, but we're working on it. We don't pretend to be perfect and all knowing. If you have constructive feedback, we are listening and want you, the community to take a role in shaping this site. TR didn't change a lot for a long time due to resources, but this is changing and the site will continue to evolve. Here's your chance at being a productive, civil member of the community. It's your choice.

David's right, you know. TR is in the impossible position of trying to please everyone.

There is a Google Docs link around page six (assuming you view 50 entries per page) that is attempting to gather up the issues in a way that will enable the tech team at TR to address them without things falling off radar.

Oh wait! I have the link right here... https://spreadsheets1.google.com/ccc?hl=en&hl=en&key=tyt9_mAgySTdvb1ot3cL2Wg&authkey=CJmbw7sB#gid=2

The last TR update was so many years ago that I was still using a Nokia cell phone that closely resembled a brick. You didn't get thumbs up, you got points for answering questions... if you were lucky. Peter Spande hadn't been replaced by Jason Hiner yet, and we still wrote our own News.

In twenty years of working in technology, the only constant I have seen is the mandate, "Change or die".

Oz, to be fair, TR has asked NUMEROUS times for feedback on what people want. I have personally started a few posts requesting such information. VERY often, all anyone got was crickets- INCLUDING me.

My opinion? They are doing their best. Realistically? They pay for the bandwidth and they assume all the risk. If they re-design my playground every few years, it's a small price to pay.

That Google docs link? There is a page JUST for suggestions.




Edit for typos and poor sentence construction

Appreciate the perspective.

And, just for the record, I was part of the last big redesign in 2006, too -- when we rolled out Workspace and a lot of community changes. Pete Spande was the general manager of TechRepublic at the time and I was the head of editorial. We're organized a little differently now, but today David's role is similar to Pete's back then (only David's role is even more focused on the site itself). Also, the editorial department is now in a separate branch of the organization, so David and I collaborate closely on the big picture strategy of the TechRepublic site. He's a super-knowledgeable guy with a lot of great experience in UX and we're lucky to have him on the team.

And no one liked those changes either.

Seriously, TR looks like a FB wannabe now. Did you invite a random sample of members to give their opinions? Did you do any mock-ups?

I honestly don't think I can stand it. This is so ugly. Wouldn't it be much more user-friendly to have a just plain text theme for serious business users?

There really should be a smiley that indicated sarcasm.

While it doesn't directly impact on me I do have a few clients who are Color Blind so maybe I'm more sensitive to this issue but I can tell you any person that is Color Blind will simply loose most of the links up top when they are active.

That is taking into account if they can see them at all which most will not be able to.

Col

I'm color blind and don't have any issues with the page color scheme. I do however dislike that I have to view it with ie as Opera 11 doesn't like it.

My Opera 11 doesn't complain. Maybe you have some old CSS-file in your cache?
Try refreshing your cache and/or restarting Opera. (Oh, there was an update to Opera some 12 hours ago. Why not run it...)

Unfortunately, the list of discussions is completely useless now. It shows my own comments; it gives me absolutely nothing about most recent comments to discussions. No matter how much activity goes on in a discussion, nothing changes on my discussions list unless I make a comment myself -- and even then, all it tells me is that I made a comment. Well, duh, I know I did, because I'm the person who made the comment.

I have NO WAY of keeping track of the conversations, short of waiting for the email alert, getting an RSS feed (I really hate RSS feeds for busy conversations, its inbox overload), or hitting refresh and hoping to notice what's new, because the coloring of visited/unvisited doesn't work.

J.Ja

as a quick fix for what's been seen and unseen. will review the conversation tracking outside of email and RSS. send me any ideas.

That's great, thanks!

J.Ja

Even though I, too, convert my feeds to email, I deposit them into a different folder so I can scan them more quickly. They don't mix well with correspondence.

thanks for that perspective, will note it for feature improvements.

so you expressed what you don't like, so what elements would be useful to display?

thread title, who started it, who last commented? and/or contacts that last commented? link to your comment?

Discussion, Contribution, Date, Posts, Votes

These are good columns. I think they just need to reflect different information. It seems to track comments user's have posted into discussions rather than activity in discussions users are interested in.

Discussion; show me the discussion or article title. This allows me to track specific discussions rather than my own comments within discussions.

Contribution; optional though I'm not sure how it relates to discussions. I see how it relates to tracking user comments.. just not how it relates to tracking discussions.

Date; the date/time of the last comment. Date was there in the past, time was missing. With time now indicated, I can see if comments are newer then my last discussion scan even if my browser does not grew out the discussion link as "visited".

Posts; number of posts in the discussion is good. Number of responses to my posts or number of posts since my last post could be handy information also. As is, it indicates how large a discussion is though so fair enough.

Votes; maybe this indicates how many votes a person has gotten in the discussion though votes really does refer more to a specific post.

Alternatively, maybe leave the display table as is; focusing on user posts. The user can see comments, if they've been voted up/down and Posts could refer to replies in the subthread versus total posts in discussion.

So, what happens if a post is added but not under one of my comment's subthreads? Currently, I don't see that update. Potentially, you add an additional column; just wide enough for a "new posts" icon. In this case, I'm getting the current information; my comment title, time/date, replies to it, it's being voted up or down - which is all good stuff to know. I also get the indication of new discussion comments outside of my own and subthreads.

My other example would be OSNews.

The display is by comment not by discussion similar to the new TR layout versus the old. comments are in cronological order newest to oldest. With each comment, I see votes up/down and number of replies. Links provide direct access to the sub-thread starting with my own comment.

What OSNews system lacks is the overall discussion indicator. One must go back and scan down the discussion hoping to spot new comments in amongst the already read stuff.

Others should chime in, too, but here's what I would like ideally:

One page, on which I can find, organized by discussion, an individual link to every comment *that I haven't visited yet* on every discussion in which I have participated. Added bonus: a way to mark one of those comments as "read" without visiting it.

That's the key problem that's alienating me; I can't track discussions I'm interested in. Lurking the "Hot discussions" list gives some indication when it's time to check back on chatter but it's not ideal. Hopefully it's enough of a crutch to keep up while the TR devs finish polishing.

That page now only carries my last 100 posts. It doesn't have thread titles, it only updates if I post.

I want to know when people post to discussions I've subscribed to.

... mine only go back to 12/26/2010 -- there must be some maximum on the number listed. I've been a member since the previous millennium.

I had a totally acerbic reply, but I was cast into some netherworld, now having to log in again. Is this an anomaly, or, is it designed?

several times so far. Good question.

Can't seem to edit that last one...

I'd really like to see who made the last post in a discussion or question. Frankly, seeing the same new name ruling the 'last post' column was a dead giveaway that the newbie was a spammer and made it much easier to notice them, as well as find their profile and get rid of their crud. I've also noticed, that when viewing a profile and clicking on a spammers post, I'm taken to the head of the thread, not the post I want to mark. In lengthy discussions/questions, this is going to make it a huge pita to find and get rid of spam posts.

I'll have more in a few days. Pretty sure you can bet on that.

I can just people posting lengthy dialogue, properly spaced for easy reading, and then going in to fix a typo and all paragraph formatting is lost. Now that's a PITA!

Since a tweak from wayback, editing a comment with HTML entities required re-typing the entity codes. This may have occurred with some other HTML formatting as well,. Haven't even tried with this forum software yet.

Voting kicks me out and makes me have to log back in.

That's really odd, it seems like this kicked on/off thing is only happening to some people?

J.Ja

On the old TR, this one, and other sites when I swapped to IE8 and tightened security and changed some cookie settings. I don't know if that's what would be causing it for others, but that's what causes it for me. It's an irritation, but I'll put up with it in the interest of a little bit tighter security.

There's probably some specific cookie you need to accept to prevent that behavior -- something that registers as a "third party site" origin for the cookie according to your browser, perhaps, even though it is likely to be some TechRepublic-associated property (just with a different domain name).

It seems that nobody designs Websites to make things easy for people who care about the technologies they use.

... after the content issues are sorted out.

First and foremost, I know how much work goes into something like this... you guys know that I'm real familiar with what these kinds of projects are like. I don't expect them to EVER be perfect or even go smoothly. The redesigned site I rolled out a few days ago was a year of work, and I'm very glad that my name wasn't attached to most of the project because I'm not thrilled with it...

The overall job done here is something to be proud of, and a lot of the feedback folks have been giving was obviously taken into account, and it's appreciated. So think of this as a "punch list", not as a set of "wow, this sucks!" criticisms.

One of the things that's really harsh on the eyes is this embedded effect on the text for all of the graphics. It's adding a slight drop shadow on the inside of the "bezel" that makes it hard to see.

Throughout, many of the color choices are making it VERY hard to read. White numbers on a light green button, for example (the comment counts), or a light green on a light grey background (like right above the box I'm typing in right now). White text on light blue buttons. All of these buttons need a heavier weight font so that they are readable.

The over all issue is one of contrast. The left arrows on the "Media Gallery" to the right are invisible for all intents and purposes... and I'm using a very high end monitor!

On the other hand, I like the increased font size very much!

The content areas are, for all intents and purposes, SMALLER. Why? Because the font size is cranked to a readable level (finally). I have no clue how i am supposed to include code samples in articles or comments when there is less than 100 characters' worth of width to work with. At least I use C# now where the whitespace didn't matter, but for Ruby, Python, VB.NET, etc. code... let's just say it's not going to encourage folks to post sample code.

The top few navigation bars are totally illegible.

The highlighted item in the "Blogs/Discussions" nav covers up the pipe character to the right of the button.

I like the "Collapse" on the giant buttons over the article. I never used them, and it's nice to be able to get those 150 pixels back.

The navigation, as is, is very poor. It will be extremely improved if the "blog" content goes into the main bins ("Mobile Development", "Leadership", etc.).

J.Ja

I had to do a log out/log in to post. Maybe because I hadn't logged into the new system yet.

J.Ja

It looks like, at least in the blog posts, that code samples are actually displaying fairly nicely (in a colored box in a different font). That's appreciated! Is there a way to tag content in a comment to be code too, like on Stack Overflow and MSDN?

J.Ja

I am not a coder. I am not a coder. I am not a coder. But I know how to copy and paste, and use the "samp" tag. namespace Microsoft.Crm.Sdk.Utility
{
public class CrmServiceUtility
{
public static CrmService GetCrmService()
{
return GetCrmService(null, null);
}

public static CrmService GetCrmService(string organizationName)
{
return GetCrmService(null, organizationName);
}

///
/// Set up the CRM Service.
///
/// My Organization
/// CrmService configured with AD Authentication
public static CrmService GetCrmService(string crmServerUrl, string organizationName)
{

Looks good.

How are we supposed to know about this? There needs to be a link near the comments box for formatting help. I've never used the formatting because I have no way of finding out how to do the formatting.

J.Ja

Dim lTimeAtRes:
Dim sDisplayedValue:
Dim dtOne:
Dim C32Ext:
Set C32Ext = CreateObject("Object"):
lTimeAtRes = 0:
sDisplayedValue = Mid(vReturnVal,4):
If sDisplayedValue 36 Then:
vReturnVal = 0:
End If:
Set C32Ext = Nothing:



Fail

... it is completely unacceptable. It cuts off long lines.

J.Ja

out the bottom of the first sample "samp" posted.

Dim lTimeAtRes:
Dim sDisplayedValue:
Dim dtOne:
Dim C32Ext:
Set C32Ext = CreateObject("Object"):
lTimeAtRes = 0:
sDisplayedValue = Mid(vReturnVal,4):
If sDisplayedValue 36 Then:
vReturnVal = 0:
End If:
Set C32Ext = Nothing:



Dim lTimeAtRes:
Dim sDisplayedValue:
Dim dtOne:
Dim C32Ext:
Set C32Ext = CreateObject("Object"):
lTimeAtRes = 0:
sDisplayedValue = Mid(vReturnVal,4):
If sDisplayedValue 36 Then:
vReturnVal = 0:
End If:
Set C32Ext = Nothing:

"Pre" nor "code" worked, both lost the formatting. What else can we do?

Every site I've been to has a way of putting in sample code that does nice formatting and coloring and such. Just use that system, whatever it is, please.

J.Ja

I am used to using the pre tag...

Every site has their own list of what tags do and do not work. Some sites don't allow HTML, but prefer their own markup language (like Markdown). You might know about using pre, but not everyone else does.

And the pre tag formats them wrong anyways... look what happens to long lines, they run off the edge. Pre is truly the wrong tag. The *right* tag for code samples would do the following:

* Maintain spaces, indentation, tabs, etc. as types.
* Wrap overflow text.
* Use a fixed width font.
* Set the block in some formatting that makes it obviously separate from the main text.

J.Ja

Stop avoiding my question

Go to StackOverflow or MSDN and see how they do it. It's not just a matter of what we, the users should be doing. It's a matter of what TR needs to do. They need to provide a facility to post code samples properly, and they need to provide explanatory text.

I'm not avoiding your question, I already answered it above.

J.Ja

I actually kinda like non-wrapping, as long as there's a 100 column width box to use (or more), guaranteed for any reasonable display resolution (600x800 and up) and any reasonable screen zoom (150%), because it encourages people to write code with lines of a reasonable length. Then again, I don't care much about Java, C#, and VB.NET -- and I know line lengths tend to need to be much longer in those languages.

I guess I'm just being a little self-centered when I say "So what?" about line wrapping.

... I hope they'll publish detailed instructions in an obvious location on how to post code. It would be really cool if they adopted an approach like the SyntaxHighlighterEvolved plugin, where you specify a code section with an optional language attribute, and it gets syntax-colored as well. The only thing I don't like about that plugin is that it relies on JavaScript being enabled. Seems like the processing could be done server-side instead.

Ideally, it'd be something that allows dynamic updates (JavaScript driven, in other words) but degrades gracefully so that a page reload will achieve the same effect if JavaScript is restricted or unavailable for some reason. Unfortunately, it seems like almost everybody in the world has forgotten about the concept of graceful degradation of interfaces.

The full selection of display preferences and third party tracking options apear only when I enable scripts. It looks like most of the site runs fine with full NoScript in affect though.

@SinisterSlay - your code here is formatted correctly with the pre tag!
http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-340633-3412219

It's cut off at the ends. It needs to wrap. In other testing, Chip's shown that pre DOESN'T work the way we need it to.

J.Ja

The votes shown in "My Stuff" seem to have no relationship to actual activity.

My picture in my bio box on my articles is missing.

In the bio box for authors, the normal right-click menu is broken.

J.Ja

Appear to be the sum of votes for the entire thread, not the votes for a particular post.

It still makes no sense to the user why it would work that way... the only metric that anyone would care about is the number of votes on the post, not the thread.

J.Ja

I can down vote my own comment. I can up vote my own comment. Both are broken.

Down voting a comment when it is at "0" seems to not update the display to say "-1", but upvoting does.

J.Ja

I haven't seen any activity with the "up" and the "down" vote. We could all go down in flames when it starts working.

The apostrophes are still messed up in many places. This is a Unicode issue, the system needs to replace the various apostrophe characters with the single one that HTML likes. A good example is the header on the poll here: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/programming-and-development/poll-are-microsofts-development-tools-headed-in-the-right-direction/3842

J.Ja

The problem is all those asinine "smart quotes" on the Web. Jeebus cries, people, this is a textual medium perused by technically oriented people; we need characters that can actually be trivially duplicated from a standard QWERTY keyboard whenever at all reasonable. Copying text from articles and pasting them in comments has been kind of a problem because of auto-replacement of totally printable characters with totally unprintable characters off and on here at TR, and it drives me up the wall. People are bending over backwards to do things that shouldn't be done in the first place, putting ungodly amounts of effort into implementing systems to automatically change text so it's less usable. It's absurd.

Smart Quotes Considered Harmful

Read it for a start on understanding the problem, if you don't already get it.

It's especially important in the P&D section to not use smart quotes, because you need to be able to copy/paste into code and have it work. Many languages have a huge distinction between the apostrophe character and the backtick which is often what comes out when copying smart quotes and smart apostrophes. This is even more important for *Nix admins, now that I think about it...

J.Ja

Furthermore, the font used for rendering code samples needs to make clear distinctions between ' and `, as well as between all other characters -- especially between members of the following sets:
0O
|l1
S$
.,
;:

Personally, I prefer when sites leave that up to the browser's interpretation of the <code> tag -- I can set that to Deja Vu Sans Mono and be happy.

The water cooler is a leper colony. Unseen, untrackable, a lawless waste for the unseemly.That might be cool, in a banished to hell -sort of way, but you'll need to put a "My water cooler" list option on "My stuff", otherwise it's a given that we misfits will have to mingle with the posh people, just to keep track of each other and ourselves.

In English: Posts with the Off Topic tag don't show up in the "My Stuff", making the whole thing very unfriendly. There is a risk that people will just ignore the section, posting whatever in the discussions proper section in stead.That's not a threat, simly a prediction

While I read quite a few of the articles, most of my posting is done in the off-topic threads. If I have no easy way to track those threads, I'll probably go back to lurking.

Go to My Account | My Stuff | My Discussions

That should show you all of the discussions that you're involved in, including anything "off-topic" in the Water Cooler. Let me know if it doesn't work.

What I'm looking for is a list of the discussions themselves, and there doesn't seem to be any way to get that.

Jason, the posts I've made in the Water Cooler discussions do not appear in the badly mis-titled My Discussions (should be My Posts).

What I was expecting to find in My Discussions was the same thing we had before: a list of the discussions you have subscribed to, sorted chronologically by most-recent update, and including both the thread title and the title of the newest post.

But I've got expanded mode back now, with the Expand/Collapse option available. Thank you very much!

Thanks for the detail on how you'd prefer it to work. We're noting this and considering it for the tweaking/tuning that we're doing.

The Water Cooler discussions should be showing up in there, but sometimes it's taking a long lag before they appear. This is a known bug that we will fix.

It's really the most convenient way for me (and apparently Chad and others, too) to track the discussions I'm interested in. My off-line time due to work makes it nearly impossible for me to track activity using email or rss without dealing with a flood of email or feeds.

I AM getting the email updates, though.

Thank you Ansu. This is exactly the kind of feedback we're looking for. We'll see what we can do to help people track their water cooler threads. Stay tuned.

You can track all of the discussions that you're involved in at the My Discussions area.

Go to My Account | My Stuff | My Discussions

Do you not see your Water Cooler stuff in there? If that's the case, then it's a bug and not a feature. Let me know and we'll investigate.

I thought at first it only showed pre-update posts, but then I realized it just left out the OT discussions.
You should be able to verify, as you now have some posts at the watercooler yourself.

Hi,
How can I save an article to my favorites on TechRepublic? I'm not talking about Internet Explorer's Favorites (if I was, I would be thrown out of TR). I'm referring to the list of favorite articles that every TechRepublic member can build - it used to be that every article had a Save button which would add it that member's list of saved aticles. I just read an article, but I don't see that Save link, just links to 3rd-party sites.
I hope that TR didn't get rid of that feature, since I use it often to access articles with good tips on any computer connected to the internet.
-Michael

I've set my default view to "Expanded", but threads are coming up in collapsed view, with no "Expand" button visible. I can change the number of posts per page, but now I have to click through each post.

Edit: It appears to be random and not dependent on how I accessed the thread.

@michael: Here's how to do it...

1) For articles, click the "more+" link in the sharing box on any article. There's the option there to "Add to Favorites"

2) For discussion posts or Q&A, there's a star icon and the word "Favorite" right under the content of the post.

Both work -- I just tried 'em.

Do not want.

care to clarify that?

Prefs.:
1)Prefs not persistent.*
2)"Community prefs do not offer "All" as a default display number.
3) If I can't set default blocking below -10, I may miss something, as this can be gamed and abused, etc.
4) "Expanded" does not stay expanded, and the option to expand disappears off the page once used.*
Layout:
1) Horrific waste of space. Too much white, too low-density. Should I get a sixty-inch widescreen and hang it vertically to read more than a few sentences?
2) Comment delineation ("boxes") isn't cute, it is more like a spill. Group it up and clearly box the comment, user info fields, and command links related to the post. Better separation in reply/answer view.
3)Who told you to automatically pull a Gravatar from an existing account? Not cool.
4)Never had to set a browser to not use font colors set by a site in order to see my typed text before.
5)"Longer" posts - now I'm typing in a four-line scroll box. Whatever.
6)"Read more". A simply awful method of saving space on posts just so it can be wasted on this diffuse formatting.

So, TR did go down the hideous path which ZDNet chose for their "forum", which is exactly what I was afraid of when changes were first mentioned last summer. I seem to be sadly correct in predicting the outcomes of such announcements, now on the internet as well.

I probably forgot some clarifications while typing.

* = I assume for now this is just a bug.

On posts that have been voted 'collapsed', there is an option to view it. I tried it on a couple of spam posts that had been negatively voted on. I was able to read them.

Someone was looking into the future, apparently. Re-sizable text entry fields FTW.

Hopefully a better browser when this is out of beta. It isn't as "nice" as the 2.0 beta, which was even beyond RC-quality.

The awful and undifferentiated "top rated" and "This just in" sections at top of the thread which have the non-persistent thread settings below. I just figured out what was going on up there.

-10 points for accessibility, if that is the reasoning behind the font size/kerning/etc.

edit: Also, font too light in thread lists. List even more ridiculously short than ever. "See more" function result is worse. At least we can page back farther (apparently, anyway), but the pages are far too short.

Accessibility can not have been a consideration, or the accessibility designers are clueless. So, I think it is all a "look", rather than any form of accessibility driving this. Someone will have to claim one or the other, though, before I can explain the goal-fail.

What's strange is that the big fonts seem to be a nod to accessibility, but then the color choices completely overwhelm it going in the wrong direction.

J.Ja

 

I'm going to practice patience, assuming that there are still a lot of bugs to work out and lots of frantic behind the scenes activity...

No thread reference in thread list where comments are displayed by comment title. How many times should I open one thread from this list?

"Pages"" Hating them even more than I had imagined. This is fine for a straight commenting thread, not a branched forum thread. What's on which page now?

I guess some of what I was seeing was ephemeral. But only some.

the tidying up hadn't been done yet in Q&A. Hope they do... I spose I should check the WaterCooler.

I found the software area so useful and easy to navigate, now its awful, no filter for OS/Free/Date ect and the search section on the left is poor too. I simply wanted to search for backup software and its not possible unless you want to search 8000 pages manually.
I would put it back to how it was, unless there is more development on how it currently is. Or i am doing it wrong and cant see wood for trees?

Andy

Disgsutingly not good. Requires tremendous improvement. Too Slow!!!??? Unable to find many things easily. Too BIG FONTS and ICONS in Many places.

I like the big fonts, for accessibility reasons. Just because your eyes are good, doesn't mean everyone's are. Current recommendations are to keep Web fonts at the screen equivalent of 11 - 12 points. The font size is great.

I agree 100% on the icons. They are so prolific and all look identical, it's hard to separate the important ones from the unimportant ones. They are not self explanatory in some cases. For example, if the "Comments" icon was meaningful, it wouldn't need to have the word "Comments" on it. If an icon needs explanatory text, the icon needs to be changed to text or to something that doesn't need text to be understood.

J.Ja

I don't mind making larger fonts available for accessibility to those who need them, but I really don't need to be able to measure the length of each serif on my notebook with a yardstick. It seems to me the only solution here is to allow users to scale fonts to their own choice. In the mean time, Vimperator has a nice 'zoom' command. 80% works well for most of the text, though the headers and such are still way too huge.

Never been big on user scripts for sites, but it may be a necessity. That, or TR can offer CSS switching to official alternative layouts.

Accessibility != lowest common denominator (or below). Internet should come through the intertubes, not feeding tubes.

And an allergy to wearing my glasses, I have long been in the habit of setting my font size on my display to work for me as opposed to assuming that a forum admin would cater to my needs specifically. Accessibility is a great and wonderful thing, but it tends to be built in at the individual browser level and should be set from there.

My $0.02, YMMV

who insisted in typing in ALL CAPS because it was easier for him to read.

Both "normal" and "accessibility" browser settings have been around since, like, Mosaic. I'll adjust the browser to work for me - why suffer or expect the internet to change for you? Don't get me wrong - a lot of sites aren't set up for accessibility settings, and need to be changed. But why go too far for some particular flavor of accessibility, especially if the "better" font style is now also lighter?

Perhaps those who normally use the Windows magnifying glass to read websites.

Try Font-Reducer, the handy-dandy all-purpose way to make fonts, graphics, and almost all other web page features smaller! Just hold down either Control key while you spin the mouse wheel.

Brand new from the makers of Font Enlarger, the UL approved method of holding down the Control key while you spin the mouse wheel in the other direction!

Remember, if your fonts are enlarged for more than four hours, see your doctor.

Bring back the old one. It's much better.

EMD

EXACTLY what is it you dislike?

shorter list, what do I like about it........mmmmmm......errrrrr....there's GOT to be something....nope, nothing broken was fixed, everything else was screwed with just to make it different.
I guess after a year of coding, if you come up with somthing similar it doesn't look good. Might as well screw up the whole site and then you can justify a year's salary for tweaking and fixing, as it sits it's a joke. Absolutely laughable in every sense of web design.

"Can you be more specific?" To begin with, hire someone that actually knows how to layout a website and create a logical navigation system. This looks like it was created for a 12" screen.

Not like the improvements MS made to the Win/Office UIs?

It's almost become an annual nightmare over the last few years. They tweak and fine tune until everything is working okay and everyone finally likes it, then they think they will recreate the wheel and screw it all up again. I hate it when some tech decides he can do better and tries to justify his worth, only to do far worse. I'd have canned the web developer in a heartbeat if this had gone live with the sites I manage.

You're talking about TechRepublic like it's a little site with a single Web developer. This is a completely different animal than the kinds of sites you've worked on because of the scalability issues it takes build a site with 6+ million users/month and the responsibility we have to serve a large audience with a lot of different (and sometimes conflicting) needs and requests.

We have a team of over 30 people that have been working on this, getting lots of input from the TR community and implementing best practices from some of the Web's most efficient and effective sites, including Google, Amazon, Digg, Slashdot, and more. In fact, we've got some great people on staff that have worked on these sites (some even pioneered well-known features at those sites). These are not amateurs and the work they've done on the new TechRepublic is the best relaunch that I've ever been a part of and I've been doing this for over a decade. It took tremendous discipline for our team to eliminate as much stuff as we did from TechRepublic. The result is a site that takes fewer clicks to navigate, loads faster, and puts content front and center.

That said, the biggest part of this migration is something that you can't see. We've completely re-engineered our front-end platform so that we can upgrade the site in much more incremental ways rather than doing massive relaunch projects like this one. This is easier on the users (we don't move their cheese as often), it keeps the site adaptive and flexible, and it provides regular improvements. This is going to enable us to do a lot more cool stuff in 2011, especially some nice additions in community.

... and more of the stuff we specifically requested. Stuff like seeing what forum comments we've already read. The actions of the audience are a fundamental driver of the business, as we discussed. The end result of this project has not delivered the tools we asked for or the tools we need to continue our participation. It has made participation considerably harder. This new forum system is bordering on unusable. I can barely type responses since this box is so small only three sentences fit into it. I can't easily see what I've read and what i haven't read. I can't easily subscribe to the conversations unless I'm starting a top level post.

I've posted an extraordinary number of bugs here, as have others, and all but a handful have not been responded to with either a "bug filed" message or a legitimate response showing why this is not a bug. I think that having someone from tech respond to these items in this fashion would go a long way in cooling the flames, because right now, it looks like we are being ignored. That's not a good feeling for the folks who took their time testing this site and providing feedback, regardless of how it's worded.

i know you're on the defensive, I've been in your shoes on this kind of thing before. You didn't write the code, and we all know that. But right now, we need someone to stand up as the voice of the community and get some actual COMMUNICATIONS going on, because right now, this is a mess. You've got a pile of angry people (note that other than a few minor comments regarding font size, NO ONE from the core users is happy!) who are either being ignored, or getting responses that feel like the feedback is not helpful. This is just going to make things worse. I highly suggest getting someone from the tech team on this. I've been involved in a fair number of disaster projects, and I promise you that the lack of communications from the tech team is causing a lot more problems than having someone lose the time to monitor and respond to this forum will cause.

Let's not forget, many of the people in this forum are also industry experts, and I guarantee you that all of them are more expert in the care and feeding of the TechRepublic community than any of the devs you have working on the backend. After all, we're the ones who use this site on a daily basis, not them. I'll put one comment by Nick, Charlie, Tricia, Boxy, Santee, etc. above a dozen "expert opinions" from developers who've posted to this site twice in their life.

J.Ja

These are all professionals perfectly capable of speaking for themselves.

Thanks for sharing your input and feedback. We appreciate it. We can't respond to every post, but we are certainly reading them and using them to help run down bugs and make tweaks to enhance usability. And we were just talking tonight about reporting back in this thread on some of the fixes and changes that we're making.

It's also time to take it easy on the melodrama. We haven't changed THAT much in the community, because we know that it's hard on the power users that have established patterns of working with the site. But, at the same time, we need to keep expanding and looking for ways to make this stuff easier and more approachable and more efficient (you and I can argue about the strategy and implementation of that endlessly, but let's table it for now).

Ultimately, if there is stuff we can do to make things more effective and even in a few cases bring some features back (or find a compromise) then we're always exploring that, but this is still day two. We're getting lots of great and helpful input from users both publicly and privately and we're continuing to forge ahead and make the site better.

Give it a few days. We'll get stuff fixed and make more tweaks and then let's see where we're at.

"Don't take it upon yourself to speak for the TR community or the core users"

Did I say I was volunteering? I was actually meaning to suggest that you'd be a good choice for that. Seriously, we need someone to really track this (and the other similar threads) and act as the voice of the customer on the inside. That's what I meant. I would have edited it but...

"And we were just talking tonight about reporting back in this thread on some of the fixes and changes that we're making."

That should be a very high priority, to be honest, and will go a long way in letting folks know that their feedback is not going into a black hole.

"It's also time to take it easy on the melodrama."

I think that only a few people are being melodramatic... I'm certainly trying my best to be objective, now that my shock from Sunday over the missing content has passed. I think that, for the most part, people are trying to be objective, but you're in the hot seat so it's easy to feel like people are attacking a lot more than they are. TR is "home" for a lot of people, and they are going to take any kind of change pretty personally.

"Ultimately, if there is stuff we can do to make things more effective and even in a few cases bring some features back (or find a compromise) then we're always exploring that, but this is still day two. We're getting lots of great and helpful input from users both publicly and privately and we're continuing to forge ahead and make the site better."

I think that for the next big change, or even the small ones, it would be extraordinarily helpful to have members of the Top 100 actually work with it, hands on, and provide feedback throughout the process. We're the customer, not the development team. You're very lucky in that TechRepublic has a core group of active users who would gladly give some time to that. Take advantage of it! I am certain that a lot of the "wow, I can't believe they did that!" feedback would have been avoided by running usability tests with a small group of actual users in advance.

Or, to put it this way... would you prefer a small focus group session scheduled for a few months before launch, with time baked in to adjust after the feedback is gotten? Or do you prefer these trials by fire every few years? Either way, you're going to get the feedback and tweak later, why not build it into the development cycle and avoid this kind of pain?

J.Ja

Justin has a point.

You said:

> We haven't changed THAT much in the community, because we know that it's hard on the power users that have established patterns of working with the site.

Speaking only for myself personally:

1. The last time there was a major site overhaul/redesign, my approach to keeping up with the site was rendered essentially unusable because mass management of email alerts evaporated.

2. Off and on over a couple of years, I mentioned this, though after a while I stopped struggling to keep up by way of that workflow (see below). Unfortunately, nobody did anything about how broken it was.

3. I finally switched my approach to doing things to a completely different, less efficient (for me) way of doing it, which involved visiting the Website to use the list of site updates. It worked well enough for me to just keep up with maybe half as many discussions for a given amount of time as I used to.

4. Visited link colors stopped working in many cases after some minor changes to the site. At first, this more than doubled the effort it takes to keep up with discussions, because I did not have a quick at-a-glance way to see what comments I had or had not read, which is kind of a problem for high-traffic discussions.

5. Eventually, I figured out the necessary arcane incantations that were required to actually get visited links to show up properly for me.

6. While the group at last summer's TR in-person event discussed the coming changes, I brought up the horrific email alert management interface and the visited links issue. The software developer who was there (and maybe you too -- I do not recall for sure) assured me that someone would be looking into these things, especially the visited links thing (though the other was more important).

7. On Sunday, the overhaul was rolled out. Neither of these problems was fixed. One of them was worse than before. In addition to that, the way I had been limping along (using the discussion updates page) without my previous means of keeping up with discussions (email alerts) had evaporated entirely.

I spent a couple of hours over the last couple days -- a couple of hours ; that is ridiculous -- editing my email alert settings for discussion subscriptions in the hopes I would not fall out of discussions entirely while I waited for someone at CBSi to come up with something that might make it reasonable for me to keep up with discussions in the long run. Having to manage every discussion subscription separately is not a long-term solution, though. It is far too labor-intensive. It is temporary while I hope that it will be different from the last few years, when every time someone broke something I used on the site it would just stay broken. I went from being consistently among the top three active members to being peaking at about #10 at my best, and slipping down to 80 or so at other times. I really hope the fact it is now worse than that for me actually gets some attention.

. . . because this time I am not sure I can find a work-around that will work in the long term. I might just become one of those TR writers that never interact with the community, because community discussion is not a paying day job; I only have so much time.

So. Maybe you "haven't changed THAT much" but, from my perspective, you changed a lot of what matters most (where "you" means "some set of people at CBSi and TR who made these decisions", and not necessarily you personally).

I have received emails from others who are having similar problems, though. Maybe "we", a dozen or so people, are the only people who have these problems -- but I for one would not like to stay marginalized for long. I am waiting to see if things get better for usability from my perspective; hope springs eternal, and I hope the fact that I'm staring down the barrel of complete unusability of discussions in the long term (for me, at least) is just a temporary hiccup. On the other hand, if I am perceived to be in a minuscule, unimportant minority, I guess I cannot fault "you" guys if you decide the cost/benefit ratio is not high enough to fix my problems.

You say to "Give it a few days." Fair enough. I will probably give it a few months, if need be -- as long as I can reasonably hold out. If something does not change for me, though, the time will come eventually when I just stop trying to keep up with discussions.

I can't think of a better way to say it, so: "What he said."

My few piddly gripes with the site before were not addressed. I have much bigger problems with it now. Sometimes an expert can be so caught up in academic theory that the reality falls short.

and I will list the pros and cons of my experience.

Pros:
Profiles are organized better and include more information.
Overall, I think the site is organized better than before, but that doesn't mean I won't have to get used to it.

Cons:
Contrast. Right now, I'm typing in this comment box and I the black text on the baby blue box is very irritating...maybe it's just me?
Contrast throughout the site. Justin James covered it just fine in his comment.

When there are no comments to a post yet, it says, "The discussion hasn???t started yet. Why don???t you begin it." It should end with a question mark, not a period.

J.Ja

That text in the above comment was a copy/paste from the site... yet it doesn't display right in my comment.

J.Ja

It's a little weird that some of the content gets AJAX-y updated, but some doesn't. When I make a new post, it shows on my screen immediately, but the comment count doesn't change. When I vote up/down, the counter right next to the +/- buttons updates, but not the count in the listing below. Etc. It's just kind of weird to see the site act in some ways on a non-postback basis, but not in other ways.

J.Ja

When I do a "Share" to Facebook, the pictures Facebook wants to use are all totally wrong. The default (using the src_image header or meta tag, if I recall) should be either the TR logo or the article author's picture, not the first ad on the page.

J.Ja

The author's picture should appear at the beginning of the article to help readers quickly identify if an article is by their favorite authors.

J.Ja

The "Takeaway" area is good and I like that it's been tweaked a lot. But it's nearly invisible, with the light grey text on the white background and the light green "Takeway" text. My eyes float right over it, and straight to the actual meat of the article, rendering it less useful than it could be.

J.Ja

Yay! Best site *ever*...
Oh wait, it's not food

For other IT website developers,it makes their websites much better.

Look at the spam over by the water cooler, the OP has a -4, and yet it's "Top rated"...
Not how it's supposed to be, right?

With all of the low contrast going on, links really need underlining to be more obvious and visible. Just making them blue doesn't help them stand out, particularly to vision impaired users.

J.Ja

The links in the alerts email are broken. The links in the alerts email for the individual comments are not linked. Judging by the alerts email itself, I'm guessing that this is one of the "work in progress" items, though.

J.Ja

Overall its good, but I dislike the new login screen, its not working with my auto fill anymore, cause its script triggered I can't let the browser auto navigate to the page, fill in the login information, and submit. I haven't tried the site at home yet where I have third party cookies turned off. Hopefully that glitch here has been fixed and I won't have to login every time I visit the site.

Also, the new maximum number of comments view is a bit annoying, I preferred the more condensed, but show everything on 1 page view. This could be easily fixed by adding larger values into the drop down, such as 1000 comments or more.

Finally, this gravatar thing is annoying, I don't intend to make an account, why would I need ANOTHER image hosting service, plenty of free ones online and I have my own web server.
The option to just provide a direct link would be nice.

All of my links, data & articles that I saved have gone up in smoke....Can someone at least return the ashes?
Totally disappointed. >:[

is your stuff there?

Check in My Stuff | My Favorites -- According to our design, everything you've save in the past should be there; if it's not, then it's a bug and we'll see if we can track it down; also, make sure you saved in the account you're logging in with and not another account, that's a common mistake.

I'm missing nearly all my saved article links also. I only use one account. I have only have 39 items showing under My Favorites. It appears most of the lucky 39 came from a Windows 7 project I created in 2009, but I need my links - all of them. Oh where or where have they gone? Please bring them back - I miss them.

I had saved many articles & Links. All are missing. I checked in My Stuff | My Favirites. None are there

The new URL to directly get to your Favorites list is:
http://www.techrepublic.com/members/favorites/

I'm attempting to mimic the behavior of the discussion threads to show the last commented on at the top. This allows some of the less interesting topics to drop off the list and not clutter my field of vision. Before you think me a complete moron, I did figure out how to to do it; however, the setting doesn't "stick." Every time I navigate back to the main page I have to re-set these preferences. A bit irritating, and I imagine it will only get more so over time.

Am I missing something? I do not see anywhere to set this as a static preference.

I also noticed that when you do a FB share, it puts the count up (like it does for Tweets), but when your refresh the page, the count is blank.

J.Ja

Some of them say last seen 10 years ago

This is going to take some getting use to, a lot of getting used to..

Can't say if it's better yet, but I think you've been a bit too radical, my TR trained intuition is now failing me badly.

I also can't wait to try it on my wide screen monitor, I've a feeling it's going to suck even more than it used to.
Can I have a new wheel for my mouse, just in case please?

Tony -

On my 1900 x 1200 screen, 505 of the screen (horizontally) is unused. It just does the "hard code width and center the content" routine.

J.Ja

Now it's even more vertical, it's going to be worse.

My works second monitor is 1680 X 1050
Submit button is on the bottom of it.
Bet it's off screen at home....

Just noticed the Collapse / Expand for the top panel, should be hide/show as it preserves the absolute position of the main window...

oops...

Brill

At the least, viewing 'Expanded' needs to be widened considerably.

containing 'Keep Up With', etc... is distracting to me at any rate when reading. Can it be lost in Expanded mode to make room for widening the left hand column containing posts? Or could a Print/View All be returned to our viewing options?

once I've posted the view collapses and there's no sign of the option to Expand it again, despite my default being set at Expanded.

Sorry, couldn't edit the original. That seems to be a sporadic issue.

attacking ideas and attacking people, and I'm getting tired of reminding you. We welcome your criticisms, input, and feedback about the site. However, attacking people and name-calling (such as "wank") will get your posting privileges revoked. It's in our Terms of Service and we are committed to keeping the discussions on TechRepublic civil and respectful. Consider this your official warning.

So may be it's a built in for Infernal Exploiter.
Oh well, if you are going t make an arse of something, at least make a big arse of it.

TR can offer a mouse with a low geared wheel to ease the scrolling, maybe a 1:30 ratio would work, of everyone can just change thier nmouse settings to scroll 10 lines at a ime.
If using a notebook though, you can just hit space to page down a few dozen times and try to figure out where you want to go.
The lack of horizontal real estate in a world where widescreens are standardized now, illustrates a utter lack of industry knowledge...hang on, isn't that what TR boasts?
It appears to be designed by a group of geeks with impaired vision and no concept of web based marketing or visual aesthetics. I'm surprised the forums don't require binary input, talk about out of touch.

... in the other direction. This looks very "rounded corners and lots of whitespace" oriented, which is fine for artsy sites or high-gloss marketing. Technically-oriented readers covet their screen real estate and keystrokes required to navigate. It's those folks with whom they're out of touch.

I agree with you, but it takes a technical mind with no cretive capability to come up with this jumble of junk and think it's a website and draws new visitors. YOU'VE designed websites, you know the 12 second rule for new visitor attention, most would click away form this mess in about 3. "OOOOOPS, wrong link, try the next one maybe it looks a little more usable."

At first I thought it was a browser display issue, new website, not fully cross browser tested, tried with FF and its the same! Truly ghastly, if not one of the worst sites I've seen in ages. What a disaster! The new discussion layout and navigation is absolutely horrid!

Maybe I am the only one in the world who thinks this, but having to click each reply and then have it reload the page just to see the post (and ONLY that ONE post) is so archaic. A little Ajax or even just putting the posts there in full would help a LOT. This is the only site (that I visit) that is so backwards in this respect.

Either set it permanently through your Preferences (My Account --> Preferences), or use the "View" option at the top of each thread to toggle to 'Expanded' instead of 'Collapsed.'

I don't want to see them ALL expanded. I like the collapsed view, but when I see something I want to read, I don't want a whole page reload, I want to see the comment I clicked on, and not lose my place in the tree.

J.Ja

I see what you mean. Pardon my misunderstanding. Definitely agreed on that point.

KEY PROBLEM THERE!

It has a next link, but you don't know if it's a reply to the previous post or the OP without again scrolling down and finding its place. It's utter bollocks, a complete shite rebuild. They have made some bad changes in the past and slowly changed a link here or there to bring it into a semiusable state while it was completely rebuilt again but this is just hideous.

It;s certainly one of a kind, makes me wonder why nobody else does it but I guess that is easy enough to see.

Signing up for email alerts on a conversation that exists, but you are not posting in reply to the original item is "painful" to put it mildly. The checkbox isn't there, so you need to click the email subscribe button (which is like 30 x 30 and nearly invisible), then choose a bunch of options (which are not set to rational defaults), and then hope that the link takes you back from whence you came.

Please reinstate the simple "Subscribe to this conversation" link, and make the RSS subscription easier to get a hold of. Thanks!

J.Ja

Even more ad and link space to scroll through before you find waht you came here for in the f'ing first place.

You want a laugh try Collapse/ Expand on that top banner thing...

This was primarily a usability redesign run by our product and editorial teams. We have actually reduced the number of ads, promotional units, and redundant text/graphics on our pages. That has allowed us to dedicate more of the pages to the content itself. The space on the page for content on blog posts, photo galleries, and videos is over 15% larger as a result. The idea is to let users immerse in the content more than all of the extraneous stuff on the pages. On blog posts, we've even removed the headers with photos of the editors and authors at the top of the blog because we know users care more about the content itself and want to get directly to it.

As you noted, with our top stories unit at the top of our pages, we've made it collapsible so that it's more user-friendly.

In the discussions you display avatars at every header? You have simply made room to add more content, BIG content, that is porly laid out.

We used this format because members have said repeatedly that they want easy ways to identify the people whose opinions they care about within a thread (in order to read their posts). And, by contrast, they want to avoid the trollish, arrogant posters who often resort to personal attacks and name-calling.

work!
All it does is hide the three image panels, the rest of the page does not flow, I just get a big gap!

On top of that, the option isn;t even there in FF!

And tell you web designers to stop using wide screen rotated 90 degrees!

At 1920x1080, I'm going to need Magoo glasses within a week, and I still can't see your answer and my reply on one screen full!

Some thing like 60% of the real estate is outside the main 'window, of that, half is unused!

Usability?
Message from user, are you kidding?

This is THE worst change in TR in all the years I've been on here. I haven't considered usability yet, I'm only talking about appearance. I neither need nor want eye-candy, any chance you'll consider offering a 'plain-text-only' theme as an option?

so, I found the "My Discussions" which seems to show my comments. What I want to see is the list of discussions I'm involved in updating based on other's comments. I'm guessing those updates apear in the same location I haven't anything recent enough (or everyone is busy with the new UI).

when I checked this discussion for the familiar "subscribe to this discussion" link, I could only find the comment form field "Alart me when new comments are made". Is there a button I'm missing to "subscribe" a discussion without entering a comment to make use of the checkbox?

I've got this discussion, as near as I can tell, flagged to notify me when comments are added. Two comments drop after my post starting with the one from The Generalist. If there is a notice in the My Account area, I'm not yet seeing it.

(I do like the addition of times beside the comment date though; I generally know if a time is after my last skim for new comments.)

... but you need to dig, it's an email icon at the top, that says, "Follow this discussion". But then you need to jump through hoops to use it. Hoops that ignore your default settings, it seems like.

J.Ja

I think I see two different things here. At the discussion top I see "Follow Via: [rss] [email]".. what I want is "Follow Via: My Stuff". RSS is a nice option but I don't want to require my web browser rss tracking. This would also mean a third party sync option or only having discussions tracked in one browser on one machine. Email is also a nice option but switching between browser and email client constantly is not optimal; even with the email provided link. I'm pretty much lurking on the site all day; Ideally, I should be able to log in, load the My Stuff page and see notices of activity in discussions of interest. I should be able to check back to the tab, refresh and know that there are new comments in a followed discussion.

The second thing is the "notify me" checkbox in the comment input form, but not this comment reply form. I'm not sure where those notice are supposed to arrive; I've seen some notices in email but nothing more then that.

That's really my killer feature; being able to sit on a page and see notices that new comments are in my tracked discussions.

I haven't tried the "Favorite" functionality, that might do what you want.

J.Ja

is the old Links section. No updates, just a list of threads.

One of my favorite phrases when it comes to 'upgrades' is the phrase 'Where did they hide it today?'

The TechRepublic 'upgrade' is making me ask the question for the same reasons the questions are asked when dealing with software upgrades. It would be nice to have a before and after map of how to get to things so I don't have to spend a lot of time exploring.